RIM Deathwatch

I didn't really want to make a complete post out of this, but reading through an article that Paul Thurrott had created got me thinking again how horribly doomed RIM is, especially now that they have reaffirmed their committment to the Blackberry Playbook. It's not that I don't like the Playbook, I think it is a fine tablet, I would actually buy it if it:

1. Weren't still $499 for a 16GB model up here in Canada
2. Was not 7", that's too small for me.
3. Wasn't made by a company that seemingly has no direction.

But considering how they are fairing currently, I can't help but think of the parallels between RIM and HP because it is almost as if they were both faced with the same choices and HP is the only one that made the right decision.

So you have HP who under Leo Apotheker who was committed to their mobile platform (WebOS) and spending quite a bit of money trying to build and market the HP Touchpad. It appears that he really did believe in the product, it's just to bad that the board didn't and felt that HP had veered off into many different directions and was not delivering on it's core products/services. This of course resulted in a new CEO and a company direction that essentially dismisses the HP Touchpad as a distraction with a fire sale on HP Touchpad inventory ($99 per device) which no doubt incurred a huge loss on each device. The decision was a surprise to everyone (especially considering they had spent so much money on ads with Russell Brand), but it is a decision that in the end that made sense. They have stopped bleeding cash an refocused the company on things that it actually should have been looking at.

Then you have RIM, the co-CEOs and the Playbook. They are guilty of the the same thing that Leo Apotheker was, which was basically to drop everything else and focus most R&D efforts into a tablet in order to compete with the iPad. This is very clear with their feeble attempt to try and market their new Blackberry OS, OS7 which is essentially a service pack for OS6 and their release of 'slightly' updated Bold and Torch devices running this OS. The big difference between HP and RIM is that there is no one on the board that can do anything to change the RIM as Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are not only co-CEOs, they are also co-chairs of the board. So change in the company is very unlikely or you would have seen a new CEO by now or the abandonment of the Blackberry Playbook. RIM should have followed HP's lead and ditched the Playbook so it could take all of the money spent on R&D and use it to bring their first superphone to market.

It is really hard to be optimistic for RIM in light of these mis-steps:

• Announced Playbook 2.0 Delay: Which will most likely consist of some minor tweaks to the OS and a native e-mail, calendar and contact applications and NO Blackberry Messenger.  But to continue to have a devices with no native applications and depend totally on Android, Blackberry and Web applications does not look good. Who would pay $499 or should I say $199 for a device that does not have native e-mail, calendar, contact and other apps? And that is leaving selection of other applications completely out of the equation.
• Announced Blackberry Mobile Fusion: Which makes no sense to anyone. The stronghold has been traditionally the enterprise and the securability of Blackberry devices. The trend right now is to BYOD (Bring your own device) and if you could not secure them in anyway, the Blackberry would be the device of choice, at least for a little while longer. Mobile Fusion now allows enterprise IT the ability to secure competing devices alongside Blackberries and while it may not be 'as good' as a Blackberry I am sure that most enterprises will find it to be 'good enough'. If this software is ever released, the market share that Blackberry devices hold currently will plummit. But hey, they will be a leader in securing devices in the enterprise... there's always that.
• Announced a profit warning: They announced the profit warning on Dec 6th, which has everything to do with the recent price cuts to the Blackberry Playbook to reduce stock has some financial analysts slashing their price targets to as low as $10/share. The targets in general for the stock are trending downward and it seems that all the financial analysts agree with my opinion of the company currently.
• Drunken RIM Executives causing trouble on Beijing bound flight: This has nothing to do with their business problems, but certainly does not help promote it's image. The stunt resulted in a delayed flight for all passengers on board and a $71,000 fine for the executives.
• The 'Dingleberry' jail break for the Playbook: Not that jailbreaking is bad, but this certainly takes away from their reputation for having a 'secure' device. Developers have found what they deemed to be a 'Mack Truck sized' hole in the security of the devices that allowed them to 'root' the Playbook to obtain additional functionality. RIM just patched the flaw on Dec 6th, and the developers had a remedy to the patch available within hours of the release. 
• Announced the next version of Blackberry OS to be BBX without checking for trademark infringement: Not that this is a terrible thing, because it isn't. But you would think that a company that is trying to revitalize the OS and that is spending money on advertising the next version of their mobile OS would check to be sure that they could actually use the name. Now they jump from Blackberry OS7 to Blackberry OS10... what happened to the other 2 versions (OS8/9)? You know people are going to ask. This is more of an embarassment than anything, but it is just another piece of bad news to throw on the pile.

What I think we need here is a 'Steve Jobs' for RIM. Someone with vision to walk into the doors of RIM and make the right decisions to revive this dying brand. Unfortunately as previously mentioned, this would be virtually impossible to achieve the way the company and it's board are structured.

Here is an interesting Forbes.com article that asks all the questions that I would ask to Jim Balsillie and then some. It also showcases what appears to be either their 'default' corporate speak they use constantly to reassure or their actual delusional beliefs.